LONDON, 7 September 2006 — British Prime Minister Tony Blair was yesterday fighting for his premiership following a wave of resignations by a junior minister and six parliamentary aides over his refusal to name a date for his resignation as Labour leader.
Was this a case of traditional Labour infighting of yesteryear, or was this the beginnings of a Brownite coup orchestrated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown — Blair’s likely successor? Whether one believes in conspiracy theories or not, Labour has never seen this sort of an internecine war within its ranks for more than a decade.
David Cameron, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, while enjoying an Indian summer after polls last week put him eight points ahead of Labour, could not resist the temptation to mock the Blair government. Six thousand miles away in Bombay he described the resignations as a “meltdown.”
Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing Sun newspaper, Britain’s best-selling daily, came to Blair’s aid warning Labour MPs in a hard-hitting editorial yesterday to “leave the prime minister alone,” and dubbing their tactics “the politics of the infant school playground. This growing spectacle of Labour tearing itself apart is frightening the voters and driving them into the embrace of David Cameron.”
Indeed, yesterday’s happenings had echoes of what happened in 1990 when the “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher, equally stubborn in the latter days of her premiership and two years from the next general election in 1992, was stabbed in the back by the resignations of Tory heavyweights such as Geoffrey Howe, ex chancellor and foreign secretary; Nigel Lawson her chancellor, and the flamboyant Michael Heseltine who was coveting her office. For Blair, the “night of the long knives” has not quite arrived; but he must be wary that the “men in cloth caps, sorry grey suits” are just a stone’s throw away from 10 Downing Street.
The truth of the matter is that if the Labour Party wanted the prime minister to resign tomorrow, all they need to do is muster the support of a majority of Labour MPs and present Blair with an ultimatum of a vote of no confidence. Under the Westminster model, any serving prime minister in such a situation is powerless. With some 100 Labour MPs raising their hands against Tony Blair over the last week or so, the prime minister’s days are dangerously numbered.
There has been some speculation that Blair would resign on May 31, 2007 as leader of the Labour Party paving the way for him to leave office as premier at the end of July 2007. This was precipitated by a remark over the weekend from the staunch Blair loyalist and senior Cabinet minister, David Milliband, who hinted that the prime minister would resign in a year’s time.
Since then the media has been having a field day spurred on by an alleged leak from the prime minister’s office of a resignation plan that would see him leave office on a high note and with all the razzmatazz of a funfair. There was even going to be a farewell interview on the iconic BCC children’s TV program, Blue Peter.
In a letter to Tom Watson, the junior defense minister who resigned yesterday, Tony Blair warned against putting the Labour government’s achievements over the last decade at risk, stressing that it “is simply not a sensible, mature or intelligent way of conducting ourselves if we want to remain a governing party.
“The way to renew and win again now is not to engage in a divisive — and since I have already made it clear I will be leaving before the election — totally unnecessary attempt to unseat the party leader, less than 15 months after our historic third term victory; but through setting out the policy agenda for the future combined with a stable and orderly transition that leaves ample time for the next leader to bed in.”
It was clear that the prime minister was not going to take this lying down. He later branded Watson as “disloyal, discourteous and wrong” for signing a letter and said he was going to sack him anyway. Blairite loyalists such as John Grogan, MP for the marginal seat of Selby, ridiculed his colleagues for their “summer madness” adding that the prime minister was elected for a five-year term and should be allowed to govern without party-infighting.
Brownite supporters want the prime minister to go before the end of March 2007, thus allowing the new Labour leader to present his government program in time for the crucial local May elections. Doug Henderson, a former defense minister and a Brown supporter, said Blair’s indecision has been reflected in Labour’s dipping fortunes in the opinion polls.
“There should be a new leader in place by the end of March, in time for the local elections and midterm polls in Scotland and Wales. We have to indicate to the electorate what the Labour Party would be like going forward,” he added.
The six parliamentary aides that resigned include Khalid Mahmood, Wayne David, Ian Lucas, Mark Tami, Chris Mole and David Wright. Mahmood, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr constituency, in his letter of resignation to the prime minister, stressed that “the party and the Labour government’s work is more important than any individual. Sadly, I feel that your remaining in office no longer serves the best interests of the party or the country.”
In another blow to Blair a populous poll published in yesterday’s Times seemed to confirm that most people believe that Britain’s foreign policy has increased the risk of terrorist attacks on the country. Most British people also want the British government to distance itself from the White House to reduce that risk.
Blair came under heavy criticism last month when he stood alongside US President George W. Bush in declining to call for an early cease-fire in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. These sentiments were echoed by another ICM poll in The Guardian in August.
In yesterday’s populous poll, more than half of the respondents thought that “even though there is no justification for terrorism, the British government’s foreign policy ... is anti-Muslim and it is understandable that many Muslims are offended by it.”
